"Of course, in television's presentation of the 'news of the day,' we may see the 'Now... this' mode of discourse in its boldest and most embarrassing form. For there, we are presented not only with fragmented news but news without context, without consequences, without value, and therefore without essential seriousness; that is to say, news as pure entertainment."
--Neil Postman from Amusing Ourselves To Death
Postman did not think that the "Now... this" phenomenon was new with television. He mentions the telegraph, photography and radio as having made use of it but says that it reached its "perverse maturity" in TV. He was worried that people got entertainment, education, news and other things all from the same source: the TV. Since it tends to simplify and equalize everything it takes up, it strips things of depth, context and weight.
I can only imagine that Postman, who was critical of technology and its effect on society and human thinking to begin with, would be horrified at Facebook's News Feed. Facebook is the portal though which so many people access the internet. People get entertainment, news, social interaction and even education from Facebook. And all of these things are mashed together with no regard for what is what and what it ends up next to. Algorithms that have little to no understanding of what the bits are about sort them based on popularity. They put serious things next to amusing things, credible things next to uncredible things, personal things next to professional, and so on. We lose a sense of where things come from or why they are in the first place. Everything--not just news and entertainment--is fragmented, without context, without consequences, without value and without seriousness.
If the "Now... this" reached its "perverse maturity" with TV, it has now become perversely universal thanks to Facebook and mobile devices.
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